Li discussed this in BitMine’s weekly reserve management report. The report indicates that the company has sharply reduced its purchases of Ethereum and increased its share buybacks.
The Significance of the ETH/BTC Ratio for Li
The ratio shows the extent to which Ethereum’s performance is outpacing or lagging behind Bitcoin’s. When the ETH/BTC ratio rises, demand shifts toward Ethereum, and when it falls, Bitcoin appears to be performing better.
Li noted that during past bull cycles in the crypto market, this ratio has risen. In 2017–2018, it was driven upward by initial coin offerings (ICOs). The next surge was driven by non-fungible tokens (NFTs) denominated in USDT, and in 2025, stablecoins played a leading role.
Li is now focusing on Wall Street’s transition to blockchain-based settlements and the proliferation of AI agents—programs that execute transactions without human intervention.
“We see that the ETH/BTC ratio has reached 0.02994 and continues to rise. This metric has broken the downward trend that has persisted for the past few years and, in our view, indicates that the market is beginning to recognize the potential of tokenization and AI-agent applications. This should support Ethereum,” Li emphasized.
Decline in Ethereum Purchases and Acceleration of Share Buybacks
BitMine holds more than 5.815 million ETH—approximately 4.8% of the total supply of 120.7 million. The value of the holdings is approaching $11 billion, with ETH trading near $1,902. The company’s total cryptocurrency and fiat reserves have reached $11.4 billion, including 210 BTC.
Purchases have declined significantly. Last week, the company added only 9,926 ETH to its balance, although the average weekly volume over the past 43 weeks of disclosed transactions was 59,998 ETH.
The last five weeks mark the only period since late October when weekly purchases did not exceed 11,000 ETH. By comparison, in December, the volume reached 138,452 ETH. To increase its stake to 5%, BitMine would need to purchase approximately 220,000 more ETH—at December’s pace, this would have taken less than four weeks.
However, the company has directed its capital toward another area. Over the past week, BitMine repurchased 1.7 million shares, and since July 1, its share buyback program has totaled 20.8 million shares. According to Li, this is the largest such program among all publicly traded crypto companies.
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